Reading is one of the greatest personal investments you can make. It is calming. It stimulates the mind. It teaches us lessons. It makes us smarter. It tells us stories. It allows us to learn about specific topics. It provides so many benefits. Nobody has ever sat down to read for an hour and regretted doing so after. We regret binge watching Netflix and wasting our time on other things. But we never feel bad about ourselves for taking some time to read. It is quite the opposite. We feel great after we have finished a book. It is never time wasted.

Part of learning and growing is constantly striving to learn new information. Reading on a consistent basis allows us to learn and grow. I became very interested in money and finances, so I have read nearly every popular personal finance book I could get my hands on. It not only provided me with information about how to succeed with money, it gave me motivation to continue being intentional with my money. I also really enjoy the subject. I wouldn’t have read the books if I didn’t enjoy it.

I recommend finding a few genre’s that you enjoy. If you never read and hate reading, I would recommend reading a book about a subject that you are really passionate about. If you love to build, start with a book on building. If you love sports, read a book about sports. Around 50% of people have not read a book in the past year. Part of the reason why many people never read is due to their childhood associations with reading. It is very important to read to children at a young age and make it fun. It is also important for your children to see you reading because we all know that children don’t always do what we say. They do what we do.

I’m not sure at what age this happens but at some point in high school, many kids tend to lose their passion for reading. Maybe it’s because we are forced to read the boring “classics” as part of the school curriculum. Maybe it’s because we become interested in other things. Maybe it’s because we are constantly reading textbooks for school work. Reading becomes less fun. Many people do not pick up a book after high school or university.

Here are my recommendations for reading:

•     Read something you enjoy – As mentioned earlier, read things that you are genuinely interested in. I really enjoy non-fiction books but others find them extremely boring. Some people really enjoy fantasy novels or biographies. Read books that challenge you but read books that you enjoy.

•     Track your reading – Download the app Goodreads and track the books you are reading. Set a reading goal for how many books you want to read for the year in their Reading Challenge section. Goodreads is also good for recommending books for you based on the previous books you have read and it also allows for you to save books you want to read. Also consider using a habit tracking app to track how many minutes a day or how many pages a day you would like to read. I started with 15 minutes a day and eventually increased that to 30 and am now sitting at 45 minutes a day. This is the bare minimum amount of reading I would like to do each day. Sometimes I will read for multiple hours but I need to at least make sure I hit my 45 minutes.

•     Fiction vs non-fiction – Some people believe the you can’t really learn anything from fiction books. After all, the characters are fake right? That’s true, but the author who created these characters is a real person, with real life experience. These characters go on a journey where they fail, learn and grow from their experiences. You can learn from their experiences just like you can learn from a 300 page autobiography. I prefer non-fiction, as I learn more from them and I enjoy them.

We have one life to live and it is really short. We only have so much time to make mistakes, succeed, learn what works and what doesn’t. Then life is over. There’s not enough time to learn everything you need and want to learn by simply living. The truly amazing power of reading is that you can learn from thousands of different people who have already lived. And you can learn their lessons by sitting down and reading a 200-300 page book. You can learn entire life lessons in 5 hours. And then you can go on to another book and learn another lesson. It continues to compound and after a while, you have acquired all of this knowledge and experience that you can transfer to your own life.

You can really hone in on a particular topic and explore it. Or you can read a story about a particular character and pull from it the lessons that the character learned on their journey. So many great people have lived before us and have written down their life lessons for us to use in our own lives.

It is important to note that it is not enough just to read a book and move on. You need to transfer that knowledge to your own life. You can read every self-help book out there but if you don’t reflect on the book and actually adopt the principles in your own life, it was a complete waste of time. I don’t expect you to take every last piece of information from this book and use it in your own life. Take whatever you want from the book and use it to set up your own daily mission. You and I may be very different people. There are things I do and things you do that we won’t necessarily agree with. But I believe there are fundamental principles in this book that you will want to adopt in your every day life. Regardless of what book you’ve read, learn something from it and use that knowledge to make your life just a little bit better.

I firmly believe that it is important to find your top 5 books and re-read them once per year. You’ll get a fresh perspective on it based on what is going on in your life. It will also remind you of the important principles of the book and will get you back on track if you find yourself not being the person you truly want to be.

I believe that moving your body and reading are the 1a and 1b of most valuable things you can do to improve your life and achieve personal growth. I would highly encourage you to add daily reading to your daily mission.